1970 ALCS vs Athletics

Lore & Background

The Twins of this era carried the ghost of the old Senators franchise—the 1901 original, the 1924 pennant, the decades of futility in the mid-century. By the late 1960s and into the early 1970s, the club had rebuilt around a core of homegrown talent and a pitching staff that could outlast anyone. Jim Kaat, with his deceptive lefty delivery and endless repertoire, was the heartbeat of that staff. Tony Oliva, the Cuban-born center fielder with a bat that could flatten a fly ball into a home run, was the emotional engine of the lineup. Together they represented a Minnesota team that was no longer a also-ran but a genuine contender.

Across the diamond, the Athletics under A's manager had assembled a rotation of left-handed aces—Catfish Hunter's curveball was legendary, a pitch that seemed to bend around the strike zone. Reggie Jackson, the future "Mr. October," was in his prime, a right fielder who could turn a routine fly ball into a three-run blast. The matchup of these two staffs, these two lineups, produced a series where no single game felt safe, where a Twins lead in the seventh could evaporate in the eighth, and where the crowd noise in Minneapolis and the dead-ball-park acoustics of the Oakland Coliseum both shaped the rhythm of the contest.

The series' legacy in the fanbase is one of near-achieved greatness. The Twins won, they advanced, and the city of Minneapolis erupted. But the broader narrative of the era was one of repeated near-misses in the World Series, a pattern that would define the franchise for decades. This ALCS, though, remains a shining moment in the unofficial canon: proof that the Twins could outplay the best in the American League over the course of a full series, game after game, inning after inning.

Reader's Guide

The stadium is electric, the kind of charged silence that falls over a ballpark when the score is tied and the count is two-and-one in the bottom of the seventh. The Twins are on base, the runner on second is a speedster who can take the lead, and the pitcher on the mound is the Athletics' lefty, his glove tucked under his armpit as he studies the batter like a chess player studying a board.

The crowd is on its feet. You can hear the individual cheers, the stomping, the muffled roar of ten thousand people breathing together. The batter taps the plate with his bat, adjusts his stance, and the pitcher delivers. The ball is low, inside, and the batter rolls his hips through it—CRACK, the sound is different from a routine contact, a deeper thud that means the ball is leaving the park. The left-fielder turns, tracks it, and the ball sails over his outstretched glove, over the wall, into the stands. The runner on second sprints, rounds third, crosses the plate. The dugout erupts. The pitcher on the mound stares at the empty outfield, his cap in his hands, and the Twins' bench is a tangle of arms and helmets and open mouths.

This moment still echoes because it represents the Twins at their most dangerous: not the polished, modern machine, but the scrappy, hard-hitting, lefty-powered team that could outslug anyone in the league. Fans who were there in the stands, who felt the bat connect through the vibration of the bleachers, still talk about it at barbershops and kitchen tables. It is the sound the franchise was built on.

Did You Know?

• Jim Kaat, the Twins' left-handed ace during this era, is one of the most durable pitchers in baseball history, throwing a career-high number of innings in multiple seasons into his 40s.
• Catfish Hunter's curveball was so renowned that opponents would sometimes call for left-handed batters specifically to neutralize it, making right-handed batters in the box a tactical vulnerability.